Senate bills challenge size of natural buffers

February 8, 2006
By STACY SHELTON | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The public debate over how close parking lots, houses, businesses and landscaped yards should get to a river, stream or lake has started again in the General Assembly.

State Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville) introduced a package of bills last week that would make it hard - if not impossible - for state and local governments to prohibit development more than 25 feet away from most of Georgia's waterways.

Mountain streams in North Georgia, healthy and cool enough for trout, get a wider buffer of 50 feet. Those are the current minimum state standards.

Pearson, who chaired a study committee last year on the subject, said most people agree protecting streams with a 25- or 50-foot-wide stand of trees or other natural vegetation is reasonable. Beyond that, though, he said, "You're basically taking someone's property. . . . If it's for the public good, then the public ought to pay for it."

The legislation is filed under Senate Bills 492, 493, 510, 512 and 516. They are pending in the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

Pearson, a real estate developer, owns a cattle farm in Dawson and other properties scattered across North Georgia. But he said he did not introduce the legislation for personal gain. Instead, Pearson said he is answering the complaints of constituents and people from outside his district who say stream buffers reduce the value of their properties.

According to numerous scientific studies, natural buffers collect pollutants, including silty runoff from construction sites, and also provide shade to keep water temperature cool. Both factors determine how healthy a stream is for the public and the aquatic life that depends on it.

But there is debate over how wide buffers ought to be. The answer depends on where the stream is and the goals of protection. Around streams that feed a drinking water reservoir, the state Environmental Protection Division requires 150-foot buffers. Along the Chattahoochee River, the major drinking water source for about 3 million metro Atlantans, there are restrictions on development within 2,000 feet of the river.

The 16-county metro Atlanta water planning district is requiring local governments to impose a 75-foot buffer around all its streams and rivers.

Pearson said: "We've got too many buffers being put all over the place. . . . It needs to be based on sound science."

The main impetus for his legislation is state regulations that prevent landowners from building within 150 feet along streams that feed Yahoola Creek reservoir, a drinking water source for the city of Dahlonega and Lumpkin County.

The salt in the wound, Pearson said, is that landowners still have to pay property taxes on the land they can't build on.

Local governments are eyeing Pearson's bills warily. Environmentalists see the legislation as an attack on state and local governments' ability to regulate water quality and are concerned it could repeal existing buffer regulations that go beyond state minimums.

The last time the Legislature changed Georgia's stream buffers was in 2000. Legislators reduced by half trout stream buffers, from 100 feet to 50 feet as measured from the top of the bank. At the same time, they asked for a study to find out what the change would mean to water quality.

Scientists and researchers at the University of Georgia spent three years and $300,000 of state money studying the policies and effects of 100-foot vs. 50-foot buffers.

The findings were dire. In more than 35 stream segments sampled, narrowing the swath of trees and vegetation protecting the waterways reduced the young trout population more than 80 percent.

Further, only 9 percent of streams with 50-foot buffers are likely to support trout reproduction, compared with 63 percent of the streams that have 100-foot buffers.

Judy Meyer with UGA's Institute of Ecology and the study's principal researcher, has not been asked to present the findings to the Legislature, which requested the study. She did present to the state Board of Natural Resources, which has not taken any action.

"My understanding was that when the study was completed, this was going to be re-evaluated by the Legislature, and I hope that's the case, " Meyer said.

Pearson, who joined the Legislature two years ago, said he had not heard of the UGA study.

OUR OPINIONS

Waterways can't bear weaker laws

Published on: 02/08/06

You've got to hand it to state Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville). While his troubling lack of interest in protecting Georgia's water supply is wrongheaded, at least it's consistent.
As he did during the last legislative session, Pearson is back again trying to weaken state regulations that were established to safeguard rivers, streams and other waterways from encroaching development and pollution. Of the five bad bills Pearson has introduced so far this session, SB 510 is a standout. If passed, it would severely limit local governments from expanding the natural stream buffers that must be maintained on both sides of a waterway. Such buffers filter storm-water runoff and protect drinking water; they provide critical habitats for aquatic organisms and vegetation that aid in reducing pollution.